Oke i thought we went over this during the PTR thread but i guess it's back. If your class/spec has a niche... sorry that means it's broken. This isn't American football where you have the special tactics players who come on the field 4 times a night(Sorry euro here i might be wrong but i think it's semi-valid example). Now don't get me wrong being better at something and worse at others isn't a niche. Going back to no aoe for paladins and tank healing that is a niche and something that is not required in today's raiding.

If you go over all the boss abilities from cataclysm till the current tier you can easily see why we have so "many" healers in the raid. The only reason we bring so many healers during a fight is because of AOE damage that is hurting the entire raid. If there isn't enough damage groups will simply drop healers for more dps. These days most aoe bursts will need to be mitigated and/or healed fast because of the next boss abilities that are about to hit us. Gone are the days of loosing 80% of your health and healing it up in the next 30 seconds with the most mana efficient spells. It needs to be healed in 3 seconds flat. Because there are so many random target abilities that still do ~50% of your hp if you get hit and they tend to follow up or hit just before that lovely aoe burst that will do 75% of your hp Give you perhaps 1 castbar of time to fix it.

And when the big aoe damage isn't happening or there isn't a constant aura hurting people the healers are basicly sniping each others heals because there is fucking nothing to do except not stand in fire or dpsing. It's why we went to this HR HR EF spam having EF rolling all the time building shields to prepare for the big aoe damage. In cataclysm we saved holy power and then unloaded after the damage was done. Same shit still healing when there is nothing to heal to get HoPo. paladin/disc/monk/druid they all spam non-stop playing against each other on the healing meters. And i'm pretty sure shamans almost do the same to keep healing raid active now? Obviously paladin main here :P

Simple fact is we want to be balanced. In order for that to happen we need to be similar to other healers at the higher levels of play. And these days that requires AOE healing. Because for the life of me i can't figure out any other mechanic that a healer is required to do.Dps / Utility? Nope all those are done by dps at the same level or better. Spot healing? we can all play whack-a-mole. Tank healing? can all do that especially with the lame cloaks and massive amounts of smart heals/Shields/Hots around. Yay paladins might have that holy shock/WoG burst.. Big deal other classes have similar abilities. Same thing can be said for every other spell we have in our spell book.

We are never going to be unique. For the same reason classes like hunters and rogues have issues with this. Because you can't fucking reinvent the wheel. As much as the devs might try it's really hard to create something unique and balanced. Yay they create 1 truly unique spec/class everybody rejoice... oh wait everybody wants to be unique. Unless they really revamp the entire game i do not see this happening. Latest addition to reinventing the wheel. A third resources for all classes to manage yay. Be it buff stacks or actually HoPo/Embers/Orbs/etc.

This basicly sums up EVERY spec we have in the game. And this is not such a bad thing! You can say you want to be unique but what we all want is to play a good and useful class/spec. This doesn't mean we can't have "unique" abilities. But you have to remember they have the same roots somewhere in the past. Something that is very visible by just looking at our basic heals. This tiny list will include a lot of abilities from multiple classes:

Also, you're linking raidbot standings...Sorry to say this, but they're literally worthless. There isn't enough to heal in 25 normal to be considered for anything important. As well, those rankings are based off of logs. Top logs are generated by raids underhealing or messing up encounters in what is essentially cheesing meters. When one raid requires 1mil HPS and the other needs 1.5mil HPS, the healers in the second raid will clearly be winning.

Data and statistics can be looked at anyway you want. But I disagree with it being worthless. People put a lot of time into the site, and they provide different ways to look at the data, i.e. the average, or the median, or the highest or the lowest. you can do anything with the data.

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Originally Posted by Obsession

You should consider EF an AoE heal for a couple different reasons. SH/EF are in the same talent tier, and both should be considered AoE heals for the purpose of this conversation.

I was waiting for a reason. It's still unclear why EF should be considered an AOE. I Don't consider it an AOE. I consider it a strong HoT.

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Originally Posted by Nickflip

I hope I can articulate myself well enough. It's the "tank healer" niche. What I mean by that isn't straight up tank healing, it's the reactionary play. The ability we have to save the people that just took the "big hit"/"gonna die"/"oh shizz" damage is more consistent that any other healer right now. We have the most reliable on demand instant cast heals w/ shock and HoPo heals(ef/lod).

yes we do have some great on demand instant heals....but...
Not just you, but people need to stop thinking that Pallys are these extraordinary Tank Healers compared to other healing classes. Because while they are excellent tank healers, really just about any other healing class can heal just as well if they tweek their spec.
-A Shammy with a 50% mastery (increase healing the lower HP the target has) is effective at tank healing. Riptide HoT, and Riptide makes some target heals fasts.
-A monk can heal a tank very good, as they can throw renewing mist HoT on the tank, then channel their soothing mist and while chaneling that, cast instant big heals that generate chi, then with 3-Chi cast a different HoT.
-A disc priest shielding the tank and using penance as well as other abilities.
With those three examples though -- Shammys, Monks, and Priests are soo good at AoE healing, that they really don't usually Tank heal. Which means Pallys get stuck doing it; however, in many cases Tanks take just as much damage as other people in the raid at certain points of the raid, so you wouldn't just assign a healer to watch tanks only.

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Originally Posted by Jackalope

Paladin AoE healing right now does look rather poor for 25. HR, LoD, and LH all need to scale up to 12 in 25 man. I doubt there would be lag issues even with mastery working on HR and LoD since they no longer target guardian creatures. Prism could probably use a bit of a boost as well if it's to be competitive there.

Priest 90's are just... Ugh.

I agree with you in regards to Pally's AoE heals in 25 man being so-so... And Light's Hammer (Arcing Light) 'would be more efficient' if it scaled up to 12 in 25 man... I think I use Holy Prism for mist fights in SoO because I can heal 5 targets every 20 secs and it's great when it crit heals. Arcing Light chooses the 6 lowest hp targets and heals them up over time, blaaaaaa, make it 12 in 25 man, I mean geee it has a 1 minute cooldown, it's not like its OP or anything, It's a stack AoE heal, whereas Shammys Healing Tide Totem (3 min c/d), a Priests Divine Hymn (3 min c/d), a Monks Revival (3 min c/d) are NOT a stack AoE heal, people can be spread out...

(The reason I am still looking at 25N as well is because relatively few guilds at this point are doing most/all of the instance on H which can lead to small sample size problems).

Paladins are still decent in 10s by spec score. It's hard to buff 25 without overbuffing 10, especially since the healing rain doing 12 targets was so disastrous it was immediately abandoned, so that's out as an idea.

Paladins are still decent in 10s by spec score. It's hard to buff 25 without overbuffing 10, especially since the healing rain doing 12 targets was so disastrous it was immediately abandoned, so that's out as an idea.

Sitting, doing nothing and allowing paladins to scale horribly for 25m should not be an option. They did other stuff to buff shaman. And obviously messing with the scaling isn't completely out of the question given priests insane level 90 talents they have still done nothing to fix.

Just stop looking at meters
it's not about how much you healed, but if your raid is alive
If your aoe healing sucks, stick to the tank and make sure he doesn't die
Let the "better" aoe healing for the raid

Just stop looking at meters
it's not about how much you healed, but if your raid is alive
If your aoe healing sucks, stick to the tank and make sure he doesn't die
Let the "better" aoe healing for the raid

Dedicated tank healing in a 25man setting doesn't excist anymore, I am always assigned to tank healing in my raid group and sure the tanks have the highest % of healing done on them from me, but I am just raid healing just like all the other healers while keeping an eye out for tanks. The one thing that pisses me of right now is the amount of work I need to put in to be competitive in 25mans while other healers just push their iwin button.

Just stop looking at meters
it's not about how much you healed, but if your raid is alive
If your aoe healing sucks, stick to the tank and make sure he doesn't die
Let the "better" aoe healing for the raid

Get out of your wrath mindset that has been long gone. If your tanks need dedicated tank healers they are doing something wrong and you need to drop them.

The one thing that pisses me of right now is the amount of work I need to put in to be competitive in 25mans while other healers just push their iwin button.

Get out of my head? LOL

Again, just goes back to my frustration with the state of healing in general atm. I think it's also exacerbated by the fact that healing is now looked at like dps, highest numbers = better healer. It's sad, but true. I just wish there was a different way to gauge healing that didn't 100% include HPS and spit out a score.

Dedicated tank healing in a 25man setting doesn't excist anymore, I am always assigned to tank healing in my raid group and sure the tanks have the highest % of healing done on them from me, but I am just raid healing just like all the other healers while keeping an eye out for tanks. The one thing that pisses me of right now is the amount of work I need to put in to be competitive in 25mans while other healers just push their iwin button.

This is so on the ball it's not even funny. I remember when you would actually go into a raid with set healing assignments. Pallys would obviously always get the role of tank healing, as would Disc Priests and sometimes Shamans. But you would have other set roles. Druids and Holy Priests were always raid healers, and yes it would sometimes overlap but not much. I remember healing Ulduar, ToC and ICC hardmodes and doing NOTHING but spamming the tank. I wouldn't even heal myself (unless I was going to die), because it wasn't my job.

I haven't seen a raid this expansion where healers were assigned roles in that sense. The current healing assignment for every healer:

Heal Everybody

Everyone is expected to heal the raid AND the tanks, but nobody is dedicated to either or. In that sense, the game seems like it has become one where EVERY healer is an AoE/raid healer. In that sense, in 25 man raids, we are significantly behind with this patch.

I know there are arguments that we do have a niche, that we're really good at spot healing tanks and that we're great for sustained damage. My guild is pushing 25 Heroic Progression. Sustained damage? If by sustained you mean constant damage to the levels that would usually be associated with burst, then yes, that's what we're dealing with.

More importantly - and I believe this was mentioned on this or another thread, and I must reiterate this point - our poor aoe and/or "niche" healing does not balance with the way most guilds work. I have played with some excellent healers, excellent officers, and excellent theorycrafters. The kinds of people who scrutinize logs and percentages of heals used, etc. However, the majority of raiders look at HPS and HPS only. From this standpoint, we're not contributing as much as the other healers. We could argue til we're red in the face (but I Sac'd the tanks 6 times throughout the fight! I BoP'd the whirling off our Rshams so they could do the healing that I'm not doing! My Beacon+EF Blankets are keeping the tank nice and cozy! I have Devo Aura, I'm useful! MY XMOG IS CUTER THAN YOURS!) and we will still be lower on the metres and they'll still think we're not healing as well.

While of course the official answer will be that those people are wrong, it's not all about HPS and numbers, and we contribute just as much.... I've been playing this game since Vanilla.. it is apparently human nature to use logs as the be all and end all of performance rating. Until we're putting out the same numbers, which can only be done with balanced and equivalent AoE abilities, we're going to start losing out on raid spots - especially in Heroics where you bring as few healers as possible to maximize DPS. Why bring 2 Holy Pallys when 1 Resto Druid or Shaman can do the same amount, and you get another DPS slot?

Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant. It's just really frustrating. The way HPals are working right now does not coincide with how the raiding atmosphere in guilds work.

Sitting, doing nothing and allowing paladins to scale horribly for 25m should not be an option. They did other stuff to buff shaman. And obviously messing with the scaling isn't completely out of the question given priests insane level 90 talents they have still done nothing to fix.

It clearly isn't only the lvl 90 talents, cause holy priests seem to be bttm of the barrel in 25N. Its the lvl 90 talents + DA

Just stop looking at meters
it's not about how much you healed, but if your raid is alive
If your aoe healing sucks, stick to the tank and make sure he doesn't die
Let the "better" aoe healing for the raid

That's not how the game works. In fact, it isn't how it's worked since Vanilla. Please post constructively or don't post at all.

IMO, Light of Dawn is one of the worst healing abilities in the game. It's hard to justify using the HoPo on it over EF in pretty much every situation.

It clearly isn't only the lvl 90 talents, cause holy priests seem to be bttm of the barrel in 25N. Its the lvl 90 talents + DA

Your point has what to do with my post? My post was using the talents as an example to show that scaling our abilites for 25m isn't completely out of the question. Holy priest issues have to do with the rest of your toolkit, especially when compared to disc. Yea DA is also a factor for disc, doesn't mean the abilities are not stupid and putting out way too much healing.

Again, just goes back to my frustration with the state of healing in general atm. I think it's also exacerbated by the fact that healing is now looked at like dps, highest numbers = better healer. It's sad, but true. I just wish there was a different way to gauge healing that didn't 100% include HPS and spit out a score.

If it were simply a matter of "Disc Priests pull a little extra AoE throughput" that alone is not the "sky falling."

The problem is right now we have the worst AoE throughput, mediocre utility (that a Ret can bring) with nothing unique to it (for instance as I mentioned we have very little unique things we can do in actuality besides BoP which is not even as useful in T16 due to widespread complaints), no DPS utility and due to their brilliant "we don't want paladin mastery to be good" idea, we can't even stack mastery effectively in "filler" low-damage times nor can we effectively DPS without wasting mana.

Our "niche" in tank healing is 1) useless even if we ARE "good" at it, and 2) questionable if it even exists, because all classes besides maybe monk has effective if not better single target healing.

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Again let's put this in perspective: Fights in 25m SoO require a lot of raid healing and when there isn't a lot of raid damage requires extra DPS or pre-emptive HoT/absorb stacking which we have neither of any of that.

We have worse throughput where it counts and worse utility where it counts... what's the point when you just get on an undergeared Disc and LOLDIVINESTAR your way into at least a measure of usefulness (even if it's not as good "meters" as your main disc, you're still contributing more).

I agree that holy paly aoe is clunky at best. In 25m we are a little weaker than 10m, mainly because we have no quick 'heal the entire raid' spell, other than our normal rotation of HR. On mobility fights - forget it. We can't all be broken like druids/priests/shammies who drop huge aoe ticking spells on the ground (mainly druids...I still can't believe they allow efflorescence to stay like it is).
That being said, I raid with a holy priest who's actually doing very well and I consistently beat my other healers on fights..so I wouldn't put much weight against the epeen/raidbots info.

That being said, I raid with a holy priest who's actually doing very well and I consistently beat my other healers on fights..so I wouldn't put much weight against the epeen/raidbots info.

That said, to be honest while raidbots and associated tools aren't really the most important thing (it lacks a lot of needed data), you should look at both qualitative (we have this toolkit versus that guy's toolkit) and quantitative info.

Right now, I can also top meters on several fights and "not be bottom" on others (mostly, the ones I don't do well are just 80% overhealed normal clears), but that doesn't really say much either. One player and one log, I can't see as statistically significant whatsoever.

Just stop looking at meters
it's not about how much you healed, but if your raid is alive
If your aoe healing sucks, stick to the tank and make sure he doesn't die
Let the "better" aoe healing for the raid

So by this logic, it's not about how much dps one does, but if the boss dies before enrage time??? I don't think so!

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Originally Posted by Freia

Sitting, doing nothing and allowing paladins to scale horribly for 25m should not be an option. They did other stuff to buff shaman. And obviously messing with the scaling isn't completely out of the question given priests insane level 90 talents they have still done nothing to fix.

Correct- there are many ways they could fix holy pallys.
1) Make Guardian of Ancients last 18 secs (up from 15) to bed better used in conjunction with holy avenger.
2) Have Light's Hammer heal 12 people in 25 man.
3) Have Holy Prism heal you and 5 targets (rather targeting boss), chances are in heavy damage you take damage too.
4) Change Daybreak break to 100%/200%, up from 75%/150%.
5) Have holy radiance go back to healing all targets within 10 yards, not just 5. Holy Radiance was the best when it was instant cast and radiated heal over time to all targets within 10 yards over 10 seconds. but it will never be that way again and it wont go back to how it was in the previous patch because of lag issues.

So by this logic, it's not about how much dps one does, but if the boss dies before enrage time??? I don't think so!

One of the issues with comparing DPS and healing is that there can almost always be more DPS that gets put to good use since things can die faster. Overkill is fairly meaningless since it's not possible to DPS more once something's dead.

Healing is another beast. It's very possible to overheal a player, and we even have the (very unreliable) legendary cloak proc centered on that now. The issue is that overhealing doesn't tend to make the fight shorter nor does it normally offer increased chances at surviving. It's simply not effective or useful, much like doing cleave damage on a group isn't useful if killing one results in the others going back up to full health. It's meter whoring at that point.

Granted, sometimes the HPS is nice to know for burst and such, but if you're doing enough healing to keep everyone alive then shooting for more HPS is just meter whoring again until you're at a point where you can drop a healer for another DPS or something.

Come to think of it, we really ought to do a comparison of how much burst healing each class can do both on single target and with groups. Moreso for groups really since that's where the meaningful encounter damage typically happens now.